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Visa officer, refugee meet again in tearful reunion 30 years later

A former refugee who went on to become a lawyer meets the immigration officer who gave her family a new life, three decades later.

Afsoon Donna Houshidari and her mother Mali Vafa'i invited Dennis Scown (left) and Mark Davidson, who worked under him at the Islamabad visa post when her family was interviewed for resettlement to Canada in the mid-1980s. (COURTESY OF AFSOON DONNA HOUSHIDARI)

Afsoon Donna Houshidari was just 4 when her family fled Iran to escape religious persecution. She is now a lawyer with the justice department in Ottawa, specializing in immigration law. (Zachary Miloff)

When Afsoon Donna Houshidari started practising refugee law, she decided to examine her own family’s journey from Iran to Pakistan and ultimately Canada as government-sponsored refugees.

She pulled out her family’s buried old documents and found the worn-out landing paper, IMM 1000, issued by the Canadian visa post in Islamabad in 1985 — the ticket that allowed her, her parents and older sister a way to escape a life in limbo as persecuted Baha’i for new opportunities in Canada.

There began her personal search for the visa officer who interviewed her family and forever changed their lives. There was one problem, though: the signature at the bottom of the landing paper was barely legible. She could make out the initial “D” and a short last name that ended with “own.”

But fate would intervene.

Three decades after the 45-minute encounter in a tiny office that housed three immigration officers, Houshidari was invited to sit on the same panel with the now retired immigration officer at a conference in Ottawa about Canada’s resettlement effort of the Baha’i in the 1980s.

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“Never in a million years would we have thought we would meet the man who made the decision that changed our lives,” a still exhilarated Houshidari said about her reunion with Dennis Scown in September.

Born in Tehran, Houshidari was 4 when her father, an agricultural engineer, and mother, a teacher, and elder sister flew to Zahedan, an Iranian border city, in 1984 and walked two days through the desert to reach Pakistan to escape persecution from the Iranian regime.

“The Baha’i were perceived as anti-revolutionary. They were severely persecuted and oppressed. My mother’s brother was a physician. He was imprisoned, tortured and executed. All because he was a Baha’i. Being a Baha’i means you’re a target,” said Houshidari.

“We escaped walking into a dark tunnel and only our faith in God was certain. We only had two small bags. There was nothing to eat or drink. That’s how we crossed the border, running in the middle of the night, narrowly avoiding an Iranian army tank that was patrolling the border and that would’ve fired if they’d seen us. My parents were just relieved because we made it out of Iran and were not in danger.”

Houshidari still recalled a letter that arrived at her family’s tiny room in Lahore one day in late 1984 from Canadian officials arranging an interview almost 400 kilometres away in Islamabad for their resettlement to Canada.

“Getting the letter was a cause for celebration. My mom had us put on our best clothes for the interview,” said Houshidari, whose family arrived in Montreal on June 14, 1985, before being received by the community in Edmundston, N.B., where they spent their first year in Canada.

After the family moved to the GTA a year later — she grew up mostly in Brampton — Houshidari’s father went on to become a businessman and her mother, a teacher. When Houshidari finished law school at the University of Toronto, she got a job with the justice department in Ottawa specializing in immigration law.

Then at an event in 2014, she met Mike Molloy of the Canadian Immigration Historical Society, a career immigration official, and raised the idea of reconnecting with the unknown immigration officer she met in Islamabad.

“There was no name or officer number on it. I just sat at home and tried to make out the signature,” recalled Houshidari, who then took the barely legible letters she configured to Molloy.

“Mike said, ‘I think there was a Dennis Scown working out of Islamabad when you were there.’ ”

Little came of her search for the retired Scown — now living in Calgary after a 35-year career with the immigration department — until September, when his name came up on the same speaking panel Houshidari was invited to in Ottawa.

Not knowing if it could be the same Scown, she invited him and his former colleague, Mark Davidson, also a speaker on the panel, for dinner at her home in Ottawa, where she pulled out the landing paper.

“He was sitting there, looking at the IMM 1000. He paused and after 15 seconds, he said, ‘Oh my God, that’s me.’ We were both in tears and sat in silence,” Houshidari said.

“I wanted to find him to say thank you and say, look, this is who we are now. You came into these people’s lives and spent 45 minutes with them. For the decision you made, you touched the lives of so many people. We were all overwhelmed with the improbability of our reunion.”

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